1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the laundering of textiles. More particularly, the invention relates to the insurance of an acceptable level of cleanliness of the textiles. Specifically, the invention relates to the testing of the water solution in which the textiles are cleaned for the presence of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
2. Background Information
In the field of industrial laundering, there is a need to ensure that textiles which are laundered meet certain standards of cleanliness. Of particular concern is the amount of bacteria on the laundered textiles although the amount of other contaminants is also important. Testing for the presence of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a useful indicator of various contaminants including bacteria because ATP delivers energy to all living organisms and is found in organisms both living and dead.
One of the current primary test methods involves the direct testing of textiles which have been laundered and dried. In particular, test procedures have been developed which utilize a swab rubbed directly on textiles in order to obtain a test sample of ATP therefrom. A luminometer is then used to quickly analyze the concentration or amount of ATP on the swab. A test kit using such a swab is described in greater detail in U.S. Pat. No. 6,180,395 granted to Skiffington et al., which is incorporated herein by reference. This test method provides rapid results and thus is a great advantage over the relatively slow process of bacterial colony growth, which usually takes about two days and is obviously not suitable for the purposes of testing laundered textiles.
While such swabbing methods are very convenient, they nonetheless have some drawbacks. One disadvantage is that the testing occurs after the textiles have been dried. Thus, if a given piece or batch of textiles must be re-washed due to an unacceptable ATP level which remained after laundering, that piece or batch of textiles will have already undergone the costly and time consuming step of drying. In addition, the swab testing of a given textile may produce different results depending on where the textile is swabbed. More particularly, a given textile may have been heavily soiled in one area and lightly soiled in another area so that even after laundering, the area which was heavily soiled may retain a greater degree of contamination. In addition, in order to obtain a suitable sample size which is likely to be representative of a large batch of textiles, a fairly large number of textiles must be individually tested in the present swabbing method to minimize concerns related to random sampling. Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a test for sanitation of textiles at an earlier stage of the laundering process while minimizing the number of tests performed.